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Today is a perfect late winter day. A tromp to the barn with birds singing and sunshine glittering against frost-covered trees — entirely satisfying.

I need to make lunch but there’s no rush. This morning I counted to see which home canned goods we’re going through more quickly than others. We’ve been piling through salsa, zacusca, and applesauce the most. But we still have a a few dozen quarts of marinara made with our tomatoes, garlic, peppers, and onions. I grab a jar, knowing soup will be on in minutes.

There are lots of ways to transform tomato sauce or marinara into tomato soup. If you’re using plain tomato sauce, add a pinch or two of basil, oregano, black pepper, and garlic powder. If you’re using marinara or spaghetti sauce, no need unless you’d like some extra kick.

Then pour your tomato sauce of choice into a saucepan. If you’re using a quart, add 1 tablespoon salt, if you’re using a pint add a half tablespoon.

Fill the sauce jar about a third of the way full with half-and-half (or for a really good soup, use all heavy cream) — basically close to a ratio of three parts sauce to one part cream. You might want to add more cream to taste. (Yes, you can use milk or soymilk or almond milk, it’ll just be less rich and more watery.)

Heat to a simmer but do not boil. Taste. If you’d like, garnish with croutons, fresh herbs, and/or some hefty shavings of Romano or Parmesan cheese. Yum.

A handmade, life-sized Trumpet Man stands in our flowerbed near the street. One of his steel hands clutches an old dented trumpet, the other holds a wine bottle. He was made by my son Kirby, who has taken no art classes yet taught himself to weld and used those skills to create this utterly fantastic piece of art in an afternoon. Kirby says he measured his own torso and limbs to get the correct proportions. What he’s created is not only proportional but full of personality. Trumpet Man reminds me of a blues player standing on stage, fully present in that pause before the performance begins. It’s a powerful piece of outsider art and I love it.

I’m also a silly person right to the core and Trumpet Man makes it too damn easy to express that silliness. During the summer he wears a fedora, tilted at an ever more rakish angle as the weeks go by. At Christmas time I give him a Santa hat. Through the depths of winter he sports an old scarf that blows around in the wind with cheerful zest. My favorite look for him is a Viking helmet with horns (something my daughter assures me is not historically accurate).

I won’t apologize for my delight in dressing him up, but there’s some history* behind this. I say Trumpet Man is an edgier version of the dress-your-lawn-ornament-goose thing that continues in some Midwestern lawns. In our area, there are Amish produce stands that still sell handmade outfits for these geese. They’re available online too.

Not kidding. Seasonal goose outfits are still a thing around here. mileskimball.com

I may actually know the creation story behind putting clothes on yard adornments.** Settle back my dears and I shall tell you.

In a Cleveland suburb in the 60’s, a nice modest family lived in a nice modest house. Their children rode bikes, played with neighbor kids, graduated from local schools, and went off to make their way in the world. One of those grown children was a nice young man who ended up working in an Asian country. When he came home to visit he brought gifts from the land where he lived. The gift he gave his parents was a large stone Buddha meant to be placed in the yard as a blessing.

His mother was uncomfortable putting it outside. Maybe this had to do with the preponderance of Catholic neighbors. Maybe this had to do with the utter foreignness of Buddhism to 1960’s suburban Ohio. Maybe she was uncomfortable with his nudity.

The statue wore little more than a robe, open at the chest. Surely he was too exposed to the elements. Surely he was embarrassed to find himself in so conservative a neighborhood. What did she do? She made Buddha some outfits.

He wore a yellow slicker and yellow rain hat in spring. He had a straw hat and t-shirt in summer. He sported a sweater with the local team’s insignia in the fall. Naturally he wore a Santa outfit in the winter.

She didn’t see anything wrong dressing the spiritual founder of a 2,500-year-old religion this way. She was treating him like a member of the family. And that bit of kitsch, my friends, may have been reborn as Dress-Your-Lawn-Ornament geese. Samsara baby!

Not THE statue, but you get the idea.

*There’s a much longer history behind lawn ornamentation if you count garden hermits. These were, believe it or not, living people paid to dress like druids and live as unwashed hermits on wealthy estates.

I’ve grown sprouts for decades, mostly when I need sprouted mung beans for stir fry or sprouted broccoli for a healthy smoothie. You’ve probably done this. It requires nothing more than a mason jar, some seeds, and a sock stretched over the opening. (Or a straining lid)

I’ve also grown microgreens. Basically they’re adorable little miniature arugula and Swiss chard plants grown in trays under grow lights and harvested so early it feels murderous to cut them down.

Then I encountered a process that is halfway between sprout and microgreen, yet is ridiculously easy to grow.

The process was developed by gardener Peter Burke, who loved greens but found his busy schedule didn’t give him time to fuss with grow lights, heat mats, or greenhouse enclosures. He didn’t give up. After many experiments he discovered a technique to grow fresh greens any time of year.

Burke calls these nutrient-packed tender greens “soil sprouts.”His method provides a harvest of salad greens in a little over a week with almost no work. Staggered plantings can provide several pounds of fresh greens every day. You don’t need a south-facing window, in fact to grow the firm stems of these plants you need to start them in the dark.

I was pretty sure the seeds were too old to sprout and the area I’d chosen was too cold. I violated one of Mr. Burke’s rules, sneaking in an extra dose of water on the second and third days. The seeds were slower to sprout than his timeline predicted, but then again, I was using old seeds in a cold bedroom. To harvest I cut them close to the soil using kitchen scissors, sprinkling these nutritious pea, radish, and broccoli sprouts over our salads. What great salads— fresh, alive, and scrumptious.

Then I violated another of Mr. Burke’s rules, leaving the more slow-to-sprout seedlings where I’d planted them. In another few days I had more soil sprouts to cut. I replanted several trays, but still couldn’t bear to toss out the soil that was still sprouting with my first plantings. Instead I’m letting a few of them grow (again, in violation of his rules) well past the point where they should have been cut. They’re still flavorful, offering wonderful texture and complexity to winter salads.

Thanks to my not-so-well-behaved experiments, I bought several of his books as gifts for friends who are as garden-crazy or health-crazy as I am. They too think he’s on to something. You’ve got nothing to lose giving his methods a try. I suspect you’ll be a soil sprout aficionado too.

If you’re interested, you’ll need seeds to sprout, potting soil, compost (we used well-rotted cow manure from out back), kelp meal, some paper (newspaper, paper towels, whatever), and some trays (even a baking dish) to plant in. I bet you’ll be surprised how easy this is and how delightful these soil sprouts are in a stiry-fry, salad, or wrap. Let your windowsills come alive!

Handing it over with a smile, naturally, sweetens any gift. But you can give literal sweetness too. With honey.

Give a jar of honey as a stand-alone gift or pair it with just about any present.

~Wrap up pillowcases and give with honey, wishing the recipient sweet dreams.

~Wrap up a book and give with honey because knowledge is sweet.

~Wrap up a housewarming present along with honey, saying “May life here be golden.”

~Wrap up a wedding gift and give with honey because, like true love, honey is good forever. (True! Well, at least the honey part.)

If you live in the Northeast Ohio area, consider buying raw local honey from us at Bit of Earth Farm. We have it available in standard half pound and pound jars, bulk half gallon jars, and charming cork-topped Muth jars. Pick up in here Litchfield or head over to Elements Gallery in Peninsula where they carry out honey.

With any purchase of honey, we offer a reduced price of $10 on Tending, a poetry collection written here on Bit of Earth Farm (available on Amazon for $14). Happy to sign your copy!

“Laura Grace Weldon employs radical empathy to enter into the hidden lives of rutabaga, cows, the neighborhood bully, and the beating heart of life itself. Playful, curious, sensual, she aims to open the reader’s eyes and heart.” ~Alison Luterman, author of See How We Almost Fly and The Largest Possible Life

It’s impossible to keep up with all the online advice about raising poultry. It’s harder yet to filter questionable ideas from solidly good ideas. I sifted through over 100 sites to come up with the most useful hacks for a recent article and found dozens of fantastic ideas. Here are a few of the best.